Re: Lily In The Wind - With Sound!

Each individual element is great.

Like Doc, I don't know jack about computer effects, but to my eye it looked good, if not a touch video-gamey. I see enough there that I'd feel comfortable bringing you in on a project. But you'd have to work faster than 6 months per shot.

Also, I have no idea why the ship lands in the mountains and then she's under a city bridge... or why it looks like Mars in the ship shot, then magic hour in Canada... but I assume you had $0 budget. So you're forgiven.

Everybody, get up. It's time to slam now. We got a real jam going down. Welcome to the Space Jam. Here's your chance. Do your dance. At the Space Jam. Alright?

Re: Lily In The Wind - With Sound!

Nice job. I'm not a VFX artist, but my one criticism on that would be the ramp around 0:52. It looks more cartoon-like than the other shots. Maybe it's just that closeups are much more difficult. Unlike iJim above, respectfully, I wasn't confused by mountains to canyon to car bridge to live-action under a car bridge (or freeway overpass), but maybe a quick shot of a tiny bridge in the beneath-us distance would be useful.

I know you're trying to establish a fictional universe, but the narration doesn't seem to add to this particular scene. I think we can wait to find out about the postbellum stuff after we care more about this character. I also didn't understand the reason for the Resident Evil-ish in-your-face close-up of the guy's gun after shooting; it didn't seem to give us important information. But that may be just a style preference on my part.

I did, however, like the Resident Evil-ish Alice-like eye that the woman had. That and the mysterious "No"-backslash-symbol "NP" graffiti on the pillars made me curious about this world. I also liked the woman's chewed-to-bleeding fingernails and the dialog "Typical"; that's excellent compact character-building.

As a Firefly fan, I'm glad to see that Leaf On's little sister Lily In is getting her own movie. Have you been able to do more with this in the last year and a half? I look forward to seeing more.

Re: Lily In The Wind - With Sound!

Wow. Way to dig this one out of the archives.

Although it's kinda intersting looking back on this now with a year and half of distance, and getting to talk about it. As far as all the VFX stuff goes, the cartooney ramp, the lack of any bridge element in the wide shot, all of that, I completely agree. And was well aware of it when I was making it and certainly had plans plans to fix it all; the only thing I can blame is the time crunch and my nievity about certain things when it came to jumping into a project this huge, as a film school project, with such a short deadline to finish it in.

languageandhumor wrote:

I know you're trying to establish a fictional universe, but the narration doesn't seem to add to this particular scene. I think we can wait to find out about the postbellum stuff after we care more about this character.

I absolutely agree...now. Yeah, it was really just one of the things that I had spent so much time developing this universe and my mind was so clouded with the idea that this was the only time that it would get to be conveyed, that I just couldn't kill that paticular baby. If I ever did a special edition of this short (won't happen, but it's a good lesson to learn) the narration would be the first thing to go.

languageandhumor wrote:

I also didn't understand the reason for the Resident Evil-ish in-your-face close-up of the guy's gun after shooting; it didn't seem to give us important information. But that may be just a style preference on my part.

Heh. Yeah...I really don't have an explanation for this one. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I remember something about it being a cool establishing shot of our bad guy, while also being pretty dynamic and interesting looking. Yeah. I was young and stupid at the time

languageandhumor wrote:

I did, however, like the Resident Evil-ish Alice-like eye that the woman had.

Thanks. That was actually meant to be a larger thing in the short than it turned out to be, and in the full version of whatever Lily In The Wind becomes, it's actually a central point around which a lot of it revolves, (At least at the moment, heh, ooh writing)

languageandhumor wrote:

That and the mysterious "No"-backslash-symbol "NP" graffiti on the pillars made me curious about this world. I also liked the woman's chewed-to-bleeding fingernails and the dialog "Typical"; that's excellent compact character-building.

Thanks! I did try to get as much in there as possible. The NP symbol was actually just a cool thing we found on the bridge when we got there to shoot, though, gotta love lucky stuff like that!

languageandhumor wrote:

As a Firefly fan, I'm glad to see that Leaf On's little sister Lily In is getting her own movie. Have you been able to do more with this in the last year and a half? I look forward to seeing more.

Well, as I've sort of alluded to throughout this post. I am still working on it. It's unfortunately had to be pushed on to a backburner for a little while though while I try to muddle through some more pressing matters. But it's still there, and being thought about. The problem is that if I'm going to do the story I really think I need to tell with this, it's a lot larger than I think anyone is expecting, so it's gonna take a while to get off the ground. But we'll see how things play out.